It's a Ford.

Demonstrating a complete lack of sensitivity for staff feelings, in the same month that Labour Councillors pushed through a major cut in staff mileage rates and refused point-blank to consider operating a cheaper pool car system, Bolsover Council took delivery of a brand new Civic car.

To rub salt into the wound its parked right outside the main entrance where it doesn’t exactly convey an image of frugalness. With emissions well into band F it isn’t going to trouble the Green Car top ten either. Of course it is splendidly equipped with all mod cons including, bizarrely, tinted windows!

I know the Queen has one but does the Chairman of Bolsover need a dedicated car and chauffeur to boot? All Councillors can claim a mileage allowance so why can’t the Chairman, or Chairwoman for that matter, drive themselves to their functions? When youth services are being slashed, staff transferred to shared service units, pay increases suspended and Council housing rents going up by 9% surely it’s time to show some restraint.

I’m told that back in July a member of staff said that a cost of £25K (plus running costs) for this car was out of touch with the views of staff and the public and difficult to justify when severe cuts were being made and jobs at risk. Back then the Council said they had “no idea” where the figure of £25K could have come from so couldn’t comment on it! They then explained that whilst there hadn't been a dedicated civic car in the past it was needed now because the car shared by the Chairman with the courier was no longer needed as that service was being cut.

I don’t know how much the Council paid for this car but according to Ford's web-site the rrp is £22,792 in the showroom with VAT making it £27,560 on the road. When you add in tax, maintenance, cleaning and the chauffeur it would seem to wipe out much of the saving made by terminating the courier.

Who made this decision? – In truth I don’t know. It certainly didn’t come to Full Council. It may have gone to a Cabinet as a confidential item but they don't let me see all of them. This morning I just picked-up a copy of “In-Touch”, the Council’s glossy sent to all residents. Ahh I thought it might be in there...... perhaps alongside an apology for both the rent increase and the recent auditor's letter but those pages must have fallen out of my copy so until they print all the news about Bolsover I'll keep tapping away at my blog.

Black Wednesday for Council tenants

Time was when you were both proud and fortunate to get a Council house. Now that things aren't so easy, benefits are being cut and the Government says a Council tenancy shouldn't be for life, what does Bolsover Council do? Does it extend a helping hand in a time of trouble? Not exactly, on Wednesday morning the Council nodded through an average rent rise of 9% for Council tenants. For some it'll be over 10% and just to add insult to injury, warden and other charges will also be increasing by up to 26%. Feels more like an iron fist than a helping hand to me.

I've spoken to some tenants in Whitwell about this decision and they are both shocked and appalled. They tell me they have never been consulted and ask what on earth is happening to all their money. We are always told most of the Council's budget goes on staffing but no increase at all is predicted for Council staff so where is it going?

Of course if the Council let some of the 149 odd houses standing empty it would help relieve the pressure on rents as would cutting some of the fat, like the £150,000 budgetted every year for "Other Miscellaneous Expenses" but much of the money is being squirrelled away into a fund to build more Council houses. Now I'm all for that but why should only tenants pay for them? - after all they are the ones who already have a Council house! Why doesn't everyone in the District contribute like we do for hospitals, schools and even Housing Association properties (who get grants from the Homes and Communities Agency)? Surely that would be fairer?

The consequence of this short-sighted policy will be to push yet more tenants into benefits ready to fall off a cliff when those same benefits are cut. And it won't even help the Council. With average rents increasing to £74.39 per week it is inevitable that more tenants will get into debt and houses will be harder and harder to let. The Council's budget even calculates just how many will get into debt.

Perhaps the saddest thing of all on Wednesday was not the lack of support from either the Labour group, the Independents or the Residents Association Councillors to my call to cap increases at 5% but their collective failure to acknowledge the pain and distress that their increases will cause. It was as if they didn't want to talk about it. Some even tried to barrack me when as I carefully explained how a pension increase of 5.2% and a rent increase of 9% spells misery to a pensioner.

May-be its time for a bit of old fashioned tenant action to make Bolsover Councillor's realise that Council tenants are not all on benefit. Many tenants have small savings, or miners pensions, that make them ineligible and feel every extra penny charged in rent. They expect a Labour Council to stand-up for them against Coalition policies. Other Councils are rejecting these increases - and it was clear at the meeting that the Leader was well aware of this growing movement. If Labour Councillors in Bolosver can't stand-up for tenants and reject these rent increases, tenants must start to wonder whether they have the stomach to fight for anything........................other than their own allowances of course.

Carrying-on regardless

At the Bolsover Council meeting this morning the Labour controlling group pushed through a major cut in the mileage rate paid to staff. Many of these staff has a contractual obligation to provide a car for their work so they have no choice but to accept a major drop in their income in a year when they are already faced with higher contributions for their pension, no prospect of a pay increase and the uncertainty involved in shared services.

It is all the more depressing that this is being imposed by a Labour Council without any agreement with the Unions. At the meeting I made a simple proposal to defer the decision for one month whilst the Council investigated the feasibility of offering its employees use of pool cars. Many other Councils have found that running high efficiency pool cars saves employees the expense of having to provide a car for work, works out cheaper than paying even the HMRC mileage rates and saves carbon emissions as well. But the controlling groups were intransigent.

For a Council dominated by a political party created by unions their reluctance to pause for a moment to consider a suggestion which could avoid an acrimonious dispute is a very sad day indeed and does not bode well for the employee relationships in the future.

Standing up for Council housing

Sometimes attacks on the key foundations of our society are obvious and direct, sometimes they are covert. As a direct consequence of Government policies the future for Council housing is now looking very uncertain, and if Council housing disappears into room 101 Housing Associations will inevitably follow.
Recognising the need for action Defend Council Housing has prepared the following emergency statement - if you agree please email your support. Many thanks.

Housing Emergency – Time for an

AlternativeGovernment is fuelling a housing emergency, with an all-out attack on tenants

and council housing.

With house building collapsing, mortgages unaffordable, and private

rents rising, Government is forcing up rents, attacking secure tenancies, and

drastically cutting housing benefit.

Homeless applications and rough sleeping are already rising, and there

are 4.5 million people on housing waiting lists

1.3 million private tenants face homelessness or debt (Chartered Institute of Housing), and 7 million report using credit to pay for their home last year (Shelter).

Government’s housing measures do not have an electoral mandate. They will create more evictions, homelessness and fear, but will not curb high rents.

They do nothing to create secure, affordable homes for rent desperately needed for all those who are priced out by the housing market. They will create exclusion zones driving out the low-paid, the sick and the poor, and their families.

We call on Councillors, MPs, tenant and trade union organisations, housing, disability and poverty campaigners and all who want sustainable,mixed communities across the UK to join in a campaign around these Action points:

1. Resist and campaign against cuts in housing benefit: we call on Councillors and other landlords not to evict tenants who fall behind with their rent as a result of the new cuts in housing benefit.

2. Reject huge council rent rises driven by government debt and inflation formula.

3. Oppose the use of so-called "Affordable Rent", in fact unaffordable and insecure, with near-market rents and time-limited tenancies.

4. No scapegoating: The shortage of housing is a result of underinvestment and failure to build. It is not caused by existing or would-be tenants in work or not, of whatever race or religion.

5. Defend security of tenure for existing and future tenants.

6. Regulation to control private sector rents.

7. A programme of investment in new and improved council and other house building at genuinely-affordable rents.

It’s time to stand together, in a united, determined campaign to stop these

attacks and demand investment in the homes we need: secure, accountable

and genuinely affordable.

Add your name to this statement, and get your tenant group, trade union,

campaign or community group to sign it. To sign send your name and

organisation to Housing Emergency Alternative to

mitchellav@parliament.uk or

info@defendcouncilhousinguk

All in this together?

It's becoming increasingly clear that those with the least are having to give the most in austerity Britain. Residents might have expected that Labour-controlled Bolsover would protect the most vulnerable but today it became clear that the Cabinet is recommending to Council that the full 9% average rent increase recommended by the coalition government is implemented. Nationally a growing list of Council's including Ipswich, Birmingham and Newcastle are recognising that rent increases of this level are simply unaffordable for tenants and are cutting management costs and reducing voids to keep rent increases at, or below, inflation.

The same Bolsover councillors who had no hesitation in rejecting the advice of the independent panel on member allowances (who proposed major cuts to the basic allowance) now seem to say that they have no option but to do the coalition's bidding. The truth is that the Council, not the government, sets rents in Bolsover and if we can freeze Council tax we can certainly keep an increase at, or below, inflation. The question is how many other members of the Council will stand-up for the poorest in our community - we'll find out the answer at next Wednesday's Council meeting, if you are a tenant you might want to come along it starts at 10am.

Who benefits from housing benefit cuts?

You may have thought it was a London issue, but there could be much misery for tenants in Bolsover from the coalitions cuts to housing benefit.

If you've not had the time to follow the details, here's an excellent article from Tim Leuen in the Guardian which will put you in the picture:

Imagine two sets of people, both renting from private landlords. One is an Islington couple who have never worked. The other is an Oldham family with four children, where the working parent has just lost his or her job. The Islington couple currently receive £250 a week in housing benefit, while the Oldham family gets only £150.
Times are tough, and the government wants to save money. Which family should have its housing benefit cut? George Osborne has chosen the Oldham family. He is cutting its housing benefit to £96 a week, while allowing the Islington couple to continue to claim £250 a week for as long as they like.
It may sound like odd logic, but that is the reality of the £26,000 benefit cap. It takes no account of your employment history or family size. So a central London couple who have never worked are unaffected, because they currently receive less than £26,000 in benefits. But a large family – even in a cheap house – will be hit. That is not sensible.
The worst hit, of course, are large families in the south-east, where rents are higher. Even in Tolworth, described by the Evening Standard as the "scrag end of Kingston borough", a four bedroom house will give you little change from £400 a week. Cutting housing benefit to £100 a week – which is broadly what the cap means if you have four children – makes life impossible. After rent, council tax and utilities, a family with four children would have 62p per person per day to live on. That is physically impossible.
It is easy to say that people shouldn't have large families if they can't afford them. But most affected families could afford their children when they conceived them, and continued to be able to afford them – until they lost their jobs in what has proven to be the worst recession for more than a century. Should they now follow Greece and give up their children for adoption?
It is the effect on children in large families that has led Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders to take a stand against the government over the weekend, speaking up for the poor in a way entirely consistent with their faiths.
The cap doesn't even hit the families the Daily Mail so dislikes – single parents with many children and many fathers who have never worked. Those families, by and large, are sufficiently dysfunctional to be in social housing, and so will not be hit – at least not much – by the reforms. Instead the people hit hardest are stable families previously in work on low to middle incomes – the really squeezed middle, if you like. They were not rich enough to buy a house, and not poor enough to qualify for social housing. As a result they pay a fortune to rent privately and are vulnerable to the cap.
Civil servants tell me they don't expect rents to fall – quite the reverse, as the market is buoyant. Nor do they expect families to migrate from the south-east to low-cost housing areas such as Merthyr Tydfil or Barrow. These are, in the main, people who want to work and will choose to stay in an area with good job prospects. Instead, they expect families to downsize. Children will end up sharing a room with multiple siblings, and parents will sleep on a sofa bed in the lounge. Clearly people can live like that, but frankly I thought that overcrowded tenements were something that Britain had left behind.
Britain is not poor. In only five years of our history have we ever been richer than we are today. The savings from the cap are very small – £270m. Yet we spend £53bn on welfare payments to people in the top half of the income distribution. Cutting their payments by one half of one per cent would be a much better way to save £270m.
Even better would be to allow more houses to be built in the south-east, over the objections of organisations such as the CPRE and the National Trust. Standard supply and demand tells us that more houses mean lower prices and lower rents. Lower rents mean lower housing benefit bills without making a single poor family suffer. If you crunch the numbers, you find that increasing the number of houses by 1.3% would cut the housing benefit bill by £270m. It would also get people back into work. Surely that is a better option.